


Making it through

by SharpestRose



Category: Savage Garden
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 22:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate universe strangeness. Contains suggestions of abuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Darren?"

The boy rubbed his eyes sleepily, sitting up in bed. "Mum?"

"Put on your coat and wake up your brothers. We're going over to stay at Nina's house." Her voice was a husky whisper, low in the equally low light.

"Ok Mum." Darren swung his legs over the side of his bed, wincing at the cold. He padded over to his brother's slumbering form, his twelve-year-old feet making no noise on the bare board. He'd learnt long ago there was no point in taking much with him, they'd be back by morning. So all he took with him was his cheap walkman, tucking it into his jacket pocket as he ushered his sister into the back of the station wagon.

"Mum? Are you ok?" he asked quietly, sliding into the passenger seat in the front.

"Oh baby, I'm fine." His mother said but he could hear her tears. "You like staying at Nina's, don't you? A little adventure."

"Yeah. An adventure." Darren put excitement in his voice for her sake. The lights by the side of the road fluttered like orange-red moths behind his eyelids as he pressed play and let the sound of the songs echo tinnily in his ear.

 

"Hey how're my favourite godchildren?" Nina asked, her face wearing the same brittle smile as his mother. Darren wondered if they knew how fake it looked. His sister began to cry.

"I left my bunny and I'm all lonely."

"We'll go get it tomorrow, ok?"

"Kath." Nina sounded upset. "Stay this time. Don't go back to that."

"She's forgotten her doll." Her voice was pleading, as if to make the logic that eluded her childhood friend plain. She had to go back. There wasn't a choice.

Darren exaggerated his yawn.

"Can I go to sleep now?" he asked drowsily. Nina nodded.

"Of course sweetie. I put the matress on Danny's floor, c'mon I'll take you in there."

Nina led Darren down the hall to a room decked in posters and filled with the cheap plastic action figures common to boy's rooms the world over.

"Dan?" Darren asked when she'd left and turned the light off. "Are you awake?"

"Course I am." A sleepy English voice said from the bed. "Are you ok Darren?"

"No." a sob rose in his throat and he felt even worse. He was a baby on top of everything else. His Mum deserved a brave, strong, cool kid like Dan, not a wimp like Darren. She needed a kid who would save her from the hurting.

"Aw, come up here then." Daniel shifted over and made room in the narrow bed. Darren snuggled under the covers gratefully. "Feel a bit better now?" Daniel put a thin arm around Darren's shoulders. He nodded.

"A little. Thankyou Daniel."

"Any time Darren."


	2. These tears of pearls

Daniel squeezed his eyes shut tighter as the car headlights washed over his room through the racing-car curtains he had thought amazingly trendy at eight but was beginning to dislike at fourteen. Then his brain caught up with his body and he opened his eyes in a squint, looking out at the beat-up Datsun parked in front of his house.

Daniel ran his hand through his dishevelled spiky hair and sighed. The nights were getting closer together. A few years ago, when he was still a child with cool curtains and couldn't really understand, they had been once, perhaps twice a month if times were hard. Now it was more like once a week, a ritual of the same hollow banter between his parents and the broken, crying woman with haunted eyes. He like Mrs Campbell, but she seemed like two different people to him sometimes – the nice, softly-spoken lady who helped at his school tuckshop on Wednesdays and this strange, wild-eyed creature who sought refuge in his living room at two in the morning.

There was something different on this night though. Daniel watched the same four silhouettes climb out of the noisy car as the engine shut off – shadowed figures he had watched grow taller over the years. But this time they acted differently. The driver was trying to put her arm around the front-seat passenger, who was pushing her away and running down into the house. Daniel sat up on the edge of his bed and turned his light on, flooding the room with cheap yellow glow.

"Daniel?"

They were in high school now, and might not have been so close if they had only had that. Daniel was a sporty student – soccer half the year, swimming the other, while Darren was the drama club darling and won the English prize every year. If they had only had that, they might not have been friends. But there was this too, and sometimes Daniel thought their friendship might be what his Mum had always called the silver lining. Something good coming out of the bad. Darren wore his hair long now, dyeing it black, making his blue eyes striking and ethereal. One of those otherworldly eyes was swollen red right now, closed under the pressure of the puffy lid and turning a hideous blue-brown fast.

Daniel opened his arms silently, letting Darren fall into them sobbing. He was a year older then Daniel but a bit smaller in height and more fragile looking, like a china doll that needs to be treated well or it will break. His shoulders shook with violent soundless sobs.

"I hate them." He said against the flannel of Daniel's dark blue pyjamas. "I hate him for hurting her, I hate him for going back to the pub every time, even though he promises, he promises that it'll never happen again. But I hate her more. Because tomorrow she'll take us back there even after this. I hate her I hate her I hate her."

"Shh." Daniel soothed, rocking slightly. "You're safe here."

"I hate them. I hate them. I can't keep going on like this." Darren's sobs died off and he slumped, exhausted, in Daniel's arms. "He told Mum that we were ratbag children. That Annie was a tramp, that David was a dole bludger because he dropped out, that I was a stupid little faggot. Just because I laughed at a joke he didn't get on TV. Said I read too many fucking books and I wasn't a real man. And she'll take us back there tomorrow, even after he said that. I hate her. I don't know how to keep going. Nobody cares." His voice was fading, becoming a murmur. Daniel stroked Darren's hair, feeling the weight in his arms become boneless with fatigue. He shifted, lying Darren down on the bed, adjusting his head on the pillow. "I can't survive it Dan." Sleepy and faint, the words were desperate and afraid, lonely and heartbreaking.

"Shhh. It's ok." Daniel whispered as Darren's unharmed eye slid closed. "I promise you'll survive it Darren. I promise you'll make it through." He reached over and turned the light off, throwing huge shadows at the ceiling from the partially opened door.

"I promise." He whispered again, leaning over and brushing his lips against the bruised flesh. Darren winced slightly, the lashes fluttering for a moment. Daniel stood, pausing at the door to look back at the figure curled on his matress. So small, seeming tiny in the riot of black shapes of the night.

"Someone does care." Daniel said quietly before shutting the door, going to sleep on the couch in his parent's room.

 


End file.
